Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a marine telecommunications network building system and a telecommunications terminal for small boats.
Description of Related Art
When a boat, particularly a small boat like a motorboat, is navigating at sea, it preferably accesses a cloud or other server to transmit (upload) the boat's own navigating condition data, to acquire (download) data necessary for navigation, and/or to engage in other such communication activities. In such a case, a wireless LAN or other wireless data telecommunications terminal mounted on the boat accesses the server via a land base station (access point).
However, when the base station is on land, as is usual owing to the difficulty of building one in the sea, boats navigating at sea are unfortunately often beyond communication range. Ways to cope with this include using a high-power wireless terminal or accessing the server after approaching land to within communication range with the base station, but these expedients are disadvantageous because the former is costly and the latter lacks data real-time capability. Large ships usually use satellite telephones, but this is even more costly and not a viable option for small boats.
In this connection, a telecommunications method for performing group communications among multiple telecommunications terminals is taught by Japanese Patent No. 3437990. In this technology, communication paths are sequentially formed among those of many freely moving telecommunications terminals that are adjacent within a radio wave reachable range, and a network is built that enables individual telecommunications terminals to communicate with arbitrary other telecommunications terminals in the group using adjacent telecommunications terminals as relay points.
A configuration according to the aforesaid technology set out in the reference makes it possible within the group for any telecommunications terminal to perform on-demand communication with any other telecommunications terminal, without using a base station. However, this is a method for sending/receiving data among telecommunications terminals temporarily gathered in a town or other land location and cannot be applied to communication between multiple boats navigating at sea and a cloud or other server through a base station on land.